hey im new to these forums, im just wondering if someone can help me out. ive searched around the internet about the solution to my problem except im not sure what it is.

My problem is ever since i moved my computer it seems to be going very very slowly. I have an Intel Celeron 2.8ghz (yes i know crappy) with 768mb of ram and Windows XP SP2 Pro installed. I had to de-dust my computers guts basicly as it was full of dust, now i did this all carefully and i have broken anything. The whole problem started about 3 days ago when i was playing this game and my computer just turned of suddenly, no shutdown message kinda like if u pull the power plug. So i started it back up again and after the tab screen ( mobo bios screen ) it shutdown again. so i powered it up once more and once again it did the same thing. so i left the computer for about 10 minutes to see if that helped, so basicly after the 10 mintues i turned it back on and it all booted well. i went into the device manager to make sure it was all there and it was, nothign was fried . anyhow i went on to install this music program when i noticed a major lag in my system. i checked all the programs running and it was usual, nothign chewing up to much ram or cpu but i dont know what the problem is. now everything i do my whole computer comes to a freeze. so i reinstalled windows after backing up thinking maybe it was my windows that was corrupt. windows took longer than average to install, bout 45 mins or so. after that i thought it fixed it, but then it came back.

i seriously dont know what is causing the lag, either ive nearly killed my graphics card ( ATI Radeon 9250 Pro 128mb ) nothing flash but yeah. ( i also checked the minimum requirements for the game and im surely above it ) i dont know what else it is, and also if i play ne games i get real choppy performance which i never used to get, thats whats giving me the impression its my graphics card. im not sure of this so hopefully someone nice here can help me out as this is very frustrating.

If your equation requires either a complex combination of variables to get the desired result OR you can't seem to get the result regardless of the variables....it ain't your variables, it's your constant.

ATI card and AGP huh? If you have the latest catalyst driver installed, make sure you turn off fastwrite and turn off the agp speed. Major problem with these two setting, by default they are enable, don't know why.

The setting can be found in the Catalyst Control Center/ SMARTGART. If you don't see it, check view advanced option.

hey i took the ram as possibly being bad into concideration but it isnt the ram, the test came back with no ba results.

i then tried the ATI Catalyst way which didnt make much of a difference, its still nothing what it used to be.

could it be my graphics overheating? or somethign overheating? or may it just be a faulty device, because i was fine until i played that one game and my computer shutdown, thats when this whole problem started.

yeah ive tried that once my computer went laggy, thats the first thing i did, i opened my side case and put a full sized pedastool fan infront of it, it did nothing in performance wise. hmmm thanks for the tip ill try again.

well i didnt really clean it out, but all i did was make sure i was grounded, then i unplugged all the cables , ide power etc, then blew inside the case to kind of move the dust, then i just plugged it all back in correctly, i also had my dad check all the cables because at first it wouldnt recognise any ide devices, hdd, floppy dvd burner etc. then i found out it was the ide cable i was using, because i have 2 hdd's connected up to 1 ide cable and my cd/dvd burners on another single ide cable. what had happened was i used the ide cable for my cd/dvd burners on my hdd, and for some reason it wouldnt detect any drives until i switched it all back. well thats basicly how i cleared out my case, oh and i took my ram out because therre was something stuck near it ( dirt ) , i made sure i put it all back in properly, and i know i did because in my bios it recognises 768mb of ram which i currently have.

any suggestions?

Regards,
Jeremy

*edit* i was playing World of Warcraft just then, when i accidentlly launched wmp, then my computer suddenly turned itself of or rebooted. wouldnt this mean its either my ram or my gfx? because my hdd has nothing to do with it and my cpu is fine, because im thinkin that the ram is overloading and so my computer crashes, or my gfx card overloads and crasshes so my comp crashes. just thought i'd let you know to help diagnose my problem.

*edit no. 2* i took out my two ram sticks ( one 512mb and another 256mb ) and placed them in other ram holders on my mobo and its a huge improvement than before, i think there was somethin wrong with the placement of my ram because its alot better now.